snow-capped mountains and its emerald valleys,
teeming with apple orchards and fi elds of saff ron,
India’s northernmost province of Jammu and
Kashmir can sometimes resemble an enchanted
kingdom. But for decades, this patch of ground
has instead felt cursed, as the center of a bloody
and seemingly never-ending confl ict between
India and Pakistan. Although 70 years have
passed since the area became a part of India, it
remains a fl ash point between the two nations.
This August, India moved to cement Jammu
and Kashmir’s place in the Indian union by revok-
ing the autonomy it was granted at the time of
its accession. While the change was largely wel-
comed in Jammu, which is predominantly Hindu,
it sparked anger in the overwhelmingly Muslim
Kashmir valley, where a separatist movement has
simmered since the late 1980s. To pre-empt large-
scale protests and anticipated violence, the Indi-
an government enforced a security clampdown
across the valley, shutting down mobile-phone
and Internet services and placing dozens of
political leaders and activists under house arrest.
Seven months on, Kashmir remains tense. Only
in the last month have restrictions on internet use
been lifted and mobile internet speeds restored
to full capacity.
Indian offi cials say these tough measures were
necessary not only to prevent civic unrest but
also to guard against the threat of terrorism from
across the border. They point to a long history of
attacks infl icted upon Kashmir and other targets
in India by groups based in Pakistan. Just a year
ago, the Jaish-e-Muhammad — a terrorist organi-
zation led by a 51-year-old Pakistani cleric named
Masood Azhar — directed a deadly car bombing
against a convoy of troops in Pulwama, near Sri-
nagar, killing at least 40 members of the Central
Reserve Police Force. The attack was carried out
by a 22-year-old Indian man who left his village
in Kashmir a year earlier to join the ranks of the
Jaish. Within an hour of the bombing, the group
claimed responsibility for it on social media and
circulated a video of the young attacker, dressed
in fatigues and holding an assault rifl e, declaring
that the Jaish had thousands of soldiers like him
who were ready to undertake suicide missions
to free Kashmir from India.
Pakistan’s current prime minister, Imran Khan,
has publicly stated that Pakistan’s Army orga-
nized and trained militant groups years ago to
wage jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Some of these groups continue to operate in
Pakistan, four decades after the end of the Sovi-
et-Afghan war. The country’s former president,
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has acknowledged that
Pakistani intelligence enabled Jaish and similar
groups to carry out attacks within India. Such
admissions confi rm what Indian offi cials say
they’ve always known: that organizations like
Jaish have become part of a Pakistani strategy
for wresting Kashmir from Indian control.
For that and other reasons, Azhar has become
India’s most-wanted terrorist. Just as the pursuit
of Osama bin Laden drew the United States into
a long and continuing military engagement in
Afghanistan, Azhar’s success in orchestrating a
series of attacks on Indian soil in recent years has
angered India to the point that eliminating Azhar
and his organization has become a key strate-
gic objective for India’s security establishment.
Twelve days after Jaish’s attack in February 2019,
Indian fi ghter jets fl ew 50 miles or so across the
Line of Control, the disputed border, into the
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, in
order to bomb a hilltop near Balakot that Indian
offi cials said was the site of a Jaish terrorist-train-
ing camp. It was the fi rst time since the war
between the two nations in 1971 that India has
conducted airstrikes inside Pakistani airspace.
Embarrassed by the incursion, Pakistan retali-
ated the next day by deploying its jets to attack
Indian military installations. The retaliation was
countered by the Indian Air Force, leading to
a brief dogfi ght and the downing of an Indian
fi ghter plane.
Despite the deadly attack in Pulwama, and the
other attacks for which Jaish claims responsibil-
ity, Pakistan has refused to prosecute Azhar or
bring the organization to justice. Indian offi cials
fi nd this galling but unsurprising, because, they
contend, Inter-Services Intelligence — Pakistan’s
powerful intelligence service — provides Jaish
with funding, training and logistical support to
fi ght a proxy war against India.
The impunity with which Azhar has operated
for so long is a source of anger among Indian
security offi cials. It keeps raw an old wound; it
reminds them that two decades ago, they had
the cleric in their grasp, languishing in one of
their prisons. But after the hijacking of an Indian
Airlines fl ight by Azhar’s associates, which Indian
investigators say bore the marks of a Pakistani
intelligence operation, they were forced to let
him go in exchange for the passengers’ freedom.
He founded Jaish shortly afterward. Though it
hasn’t carried out any notable attacks in Kashmir
in the past six months, the group continues to be
a threat, Indian offi cials say, and will most likelyattempt to exploit Kashmiri anger over the gov-
ernment’s restrictions to engineer strikes at the
earliest opportunity. Because India has in eff ect
declared a policy of crossing the border into Paki-
stan to fi ght terrorists when necessary, the next
attack on Indian soil that can be attributed to Jaish
or any other Pakistan-based organization has the
potential to ignite a full-blown confl ict between
two nuclear-armed neighbors.THE HOSTILITIES between India and Pakistan
date back to their birth as sovereign nations,
in August 1947, when the subcontinent gained
independence from the British. Even though
the partition that created the two countries was
based on religious lines, their political identities
were shaped by two contrasting visions of reli-
gion’s proper role in matters of state. Pakistan, a
Muslim-majority nation, went on to become an
Islamic republic. India, predominantly Hindu,
chose to become a secular democracy.
Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority prov-
ince ruled by a Hindu maharajah named Hari
Singh, initially opted not to join either country.
But weeks after the two nations were formed,
several thousand armed tribesmen from Pakistan
rode into Kashmir in dozens of trucks, in what
would be the fi rst of many attempts by the Paki-
stani military to seize control of the territory. As
the intruders advanced, Singh asked the Indian
government for help in repelling the invasion,
which India was willing to provide — on the con-
dition that the ruler sign an agreement merging
Jammu and Kashmir into the Indian union. Singh
consented, and on Oct. 26, the Indian military
began airlifting troops and equipment into
Srinagar. The province became a part of India,
though Pakistan had taken control of roughly a
third of the state by the time fi ghting ended in- Under the deal Singh made with the Indian
government, the remaining territory of Jammu
and Kashmir was granted autonomy over its
internal administration and allowed to have its
own constitution.
Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India, even
as a quasi-independent state, was a blow to the
very idea upon which Pakistan had been found-
ed: that Muslims on the subcontinent belonged
together in their own homeland. According to
that principle, a Muslim-majority state — one
geographically contiguous with Pakistan, no
less — couldn’t possibly belong on India’s map.
But for India, the inclusion of Jammu and Kash-
mir validated one of its defi ning principles: that
religion was inconsequential to the nation-state.
And so, the confl ict between the two countries
over Kashmir was about more than territory. It
was, at its core, a clash of identity.
Pakistan did not accept the new arrange-
ment. In 1965, Pakistani soldiers and guerrillas
disguised as local residents infi ltrated Kashmir
and attempted to spark an uprising against
India; this triggered another war, which ended
WITH
ITS
42 3.22.20
Th is article was supported by the Pulitzer Center.